OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
A Priori Generalizability Estimate for a CNN
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

We formulate truncated singular value decompositions of entire convolutional neural networks. We demonstrate the computed left and right singular vectors are useful in identifying which images the convolutional neural network is likely to perform poorly on. To create this diagnostic tool, we define two metrics: the Right Projection Ratio and the Left Projection Ratio. The Right (Left) Projection Ratio evaluates the fidelity of the projection of an image (label) onto the computed right (left) singular vectors. We observe that both ratios are able to identify the presence of class imbalance for an image classification problem. Additionally, the Right Projection Ratio, which only requires unlabeled data, is found to be correlated to the model's performance when applied to image segmentation. This suggests the Right Projection Ratio could be a useful metric to estimate how likely the model is to perform well on a sample.
SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2025
Year: 2025

AI-assisted learning companion robots are increasingly used in early education. Many parents express concerns about content appropriateness, while they also value how AI and robots could supplement their limited skill, time, and energy to support their children's learning. We designed a card-based kit, SET, to systematically capture scenarios that have different extents of parental involvement. We developed a prototype interface, PAiREd, with a learning companion robot to deliver LLM-generated educational content that can be reviewed and revised by parents. Parents can flexibly adjust their involvement in the activity by determining what they want the robot to help with. We conducted an in-home field study involving 20 families with children aged 3-5. Our work contributes to an empirical understanding of the level of support parents with different expectations may need from AI and robots and a prototype that demonstrates an innovative interaction paradigm for flexibly including parents in supporting their children.
The Power of Graph Signal Processing for Chip Placement Acceleration
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Placement is a critical task with high computation complexity in VLSI physical design. Modern analytical placers formulate the placement objective as a nonlinear optimization task, which suffers a long iteration time. To accelerate and enhance the placement process, recent studies have turned to deep learning-based approaches, particularly leveraging graph convolution networks (GCNs). However, learning-based placers require time- and data-consuming model training due to the complexity of circuit placement that involves large-scale cells and design-specific graph statistics. This paper proposes GiFt, a parameter-free technique for accelerating placement, rooted in graph signal processing. GiFt excels at capturing multi-resolution smooth signals of circuit graphs to generate optimized placement solutions without the need for time-consuming model training, and meanwhile significantly reduces the number of iterations required by analytical placers. Experimental results show that GiFt significantly improving placement efficiency, while achieving competitive or superior performance compared to state-of-the-art placers. In particular, compared to DREAMPlace, the recently proposed GPU-accelerated analytical placer, GF-Placer improves total runtime over 45%.
Predictive Response Optimization: Using Reinforcement Learning to Fight Online Social Network Abuse
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Detecting phishing, spam, fake accounts, data scraping, and other malicious activity in online social networks (OSNs) is a problem that has been studied for well over a decade, with a number of important results. Nearly all existing works on abuse detection have as their goal producing the best possible binary classifier; i.e., one that labels unseen examples as "benign" or "malicious" with high precision and recall. However, no prior published work considers what comes next: what does the service actually do after it detects abuse? In this paper, we argue that detection as described in previous work is not the goal of those who are fighting OSN abuse. Rather, we believe the goal to be selecting actions (e.g., ban the user, block the request, show a CAPTCHA, or "collect more evidence") that optimize a tradeoff between harm caused by abuse and impact on benign users. With this framing, we see that enlarging the set of possible actions allows us to move the Pareto frontier in a way that is unattainable by simply tuning the threshold of a binary classifier. To demonstrate the potential of our approach, we present Predictive Response Optimization (PRO), a system based on reinforcement learning that utilizes available contextual information to predict future abuse and user-experience metrics conditioned on each possible action, and select actions that optimize a multi-dimensional tradeoff between abuse/harm and impact on user experience. We deployed versions of PRO targeted at stopping automated activity on Instagram and Facebook. In both cases our experiments showed that PRO outperforms a baseline classification system, reducing abuse volume by 59% and 4.5% (respectively) with no negative impact to users. We also present several case studies that demonstrate how PRO can quickly and automatically adapt to changes in business constraints, system behavior, and/or adversarial tactics.
Robust Federated Learning with Global Sensitivity Estimation for Financial Risk Management
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

In decentralized financial systems, robust and efficient Federated Learning (FL) is promising to handle diverse client environments and ensure resilience to systemic risks. We propose Federated Risk-Aware Learning with Central Sensitivity Estimation (FRAL-CSE), an innovative FL framework designed to enhance scalability, stability, and robustness in collaborative financial decision-making. The framework's core innovation lies in a central acceleration mechanism, guided by a quadratic sensitivity-based approximation of global model dynamics. By leveraging local sensitivity information derived from robust risk measurements, FRAL-CSE performs a curvature-informed global update that efficiently incorporates second-order information without requiring repeated local re-evaluations, thereby enhancing training efficiency and improving optimization stability. Additionally, distortion risk measures are embedded into the training objectives to capture tail risks and ensure robustness against extreme scenarios. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of FRAL-CSE in accelerating convergence and improving resilience across heterogeneous datasets compared to state-of-the-art baselines.
The Cyber Immune System: Harnessing Adversarial Forces for Security Resilience
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

Both parasites in biological systems and adversarial forces in cybersecurity are often perceived as threats: disruptive elements that must be eliminated. However, these entities play a critical role in revealing systemic weaknesses, driving adaptation, and ultimately strengthening resilience. This paper draws from environmental epidemiology and cybersecurity to reframe parasites and cyber exploiters as essential stress-testers of complex systems, exposing hidden vulnerabilities and pushing defensive innovations forward. By examining how biological and digital systems evolve in response to persistent threats, we highlight the necessity of adversarial engagement in fortifying security frameworks. The recent breach of the DOGE website serves as a timely case study, illustrating how adversarial forces, whether biological or digital, compel systems to reassess and reinforce their defenses.
From Perceptions to Decisions: Wildfire Evacuation Decision Prediction with Behavioral Theory-informed LLMs
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2025
Year: 2025

Evacuation decision prediction is critical for efficient and effective wildfire response by helping emergency management anticipate traffic congestion and bottlenecks, allocate resources, and minimize negative impacts. Traditional statistical methods for evacuation decision prediction fail to capture the complex and diverse behavioral logic of different individuals. In this work, for the first time, we introduce FLARE, short for facilitating LLM for advanced reasoning on wildfire evacuation decision prediction, a Large Language Model (LLM)-based framework that integrates behavioral theories and models to streamline the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning and subsequently integrate with memory-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) module to provide accurate evacuation decision prediction and understanding. Our proposed method addresses the limitations of using existing LLMs for evacuation behavioral predictions, such as limited survey data, mismatching with behavioral theory, conflicting individual preferences, implicit and complex mental states, and intractable mental state-behavior mapping. Experiments on three post-wildfire survey datasets show an average of 20.47% performance improvement over traditional theory-informed behavioral models, with strong cross-event generalizability. Our complete code is publicly available at https://github.com/SusuXu-s-Lab/FLARE
FastAtlas: Real-Time Compact Atlases for Texture Space Shading
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2025
Year: 2025

Texture-space shading (TSS) methods decouple shading and rasterization, allowing shading to be performed at a different framerate and spatial resolution than rasterization. TSS has many potential applications, including streaming shading across networks, and reducing rendering cost via shading reuse across consecutive frames and/or shading at reduced resolutions relative to display resolution. Real-time TSS shading requires texture atlases small enough to be easily stored in GPU memory. Using static atlases leads to significant space wastage, motivating real-time per-frame atlassing strategies that pack only the content visible in each frame. We propose FastAtlas, a novel atlasing method that runs entirely on the GPU and is fast enough to be performed at interactive rates per-frame. Our method combines new per-frame chart computation and parametrization strategies and an efficient general chart packing algorithm. Our chartification strategy removes visible seams in output renders, and our parameterization ensures a constant texel-to-pixel ratio, avoiding undesirable undersampling artifacts. Our packing method is more general, and produces more tightly packed atlases, than previous work. Jointly, these innovations enable us to produce shading outputs of significantly higher visual quality than those produced using alternative atlasing strategies. We validate FastAtlas by shading and rendering challenging scenes using different atlasing settings, reflecting the needs of different TSS applications (temporal reuse, streaming, reduced or elevated shading rates). We extensively compare FastAtlas to prior alternatives and demonstrate that it achieves better shading quality and reduces texture stretch compared to prior approaches using the same settings.
Learning Backbones: Sparsifying Graphs through Zero Forcing for Effective Graph-Based Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

This paper introduces a novel framework for graph sparsification that preserves the essential learning attributes of original graphs, improving computational efficiency and reducing complexity in learning algorithms. We refer to these sparse graphs as "learning backbones". Our approach leverages the zero-forcing (ZF) phenomenon, a dynamic process on graphs with applications in network control. The key idea is to generate a tree from the original graph that retains critical dynamical properties. By correlating these properties with learning attributes, we construct effective learning backbones. We evaluate the performance of our ZF-based backbones in graph classification tasks across eight datasets and six baseline models. The results demonstrate that our method outperforms existing techniques. Additionally, we explore extensions using node distance metrics to further enhance the framework's utility.
Optimized Memory System Architecture for VESA VDC-M Decoder with Multi-Slice Support
Venue: arXiv cs.AR 2025
Year: 2025

Video compression plays a pivotal role in managing and transmitting large-scale display data, particularly given the growing demand for higher resolutions and improved video quality. This paper proposes an optimized memory system architecture for Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) Display Compression-M (VDC-M) decoder, characterized by its substantial on-chip buffer requirements. We design and analyze three architectures categorized by optimization levels and management complexity. Our strategy focuses on enhancing line buffer access scheduling and minimizing reconstruction buffer, targeting prediction and multi-slice operation that are the major resource consumers in the decoder. By adjusting line delay and segmenting SRAM bank alongside reconstructed block forwarding, we achieve a 33.3% size reduction in the line buffer and 77.3% in the reconstruction buffer compared to Baseline VDC-M decoder. Synthesized using a 28 nm CMOS process, the proposed architecture achieves a 31.5% reduction in gate count of the decoder backend hardware, supporting real-time performance with up to 96.45 fps for 4K UHD resolution at 200 MHz operating frequency and a throughput of 4 pixels per cycle.
Design of a Breakaway Utensil Attachment for Enhanced Safety in Robot-Assisted Feeding
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2025
Year: 2025

Robot-assisted feeding systems enhance the independence of individuals with motor impairments and alleviate caregiver burden. While existing systems predominantly rely on software-based safety features to mitigate risks during unforeseen collisions, this study explores the use of a mechanical fail-safe to improve safety. We designed a breakaway utensil attachment that decouples forces exerted by the robot on the user when excessive forces occur. Finite element analysis (FEA) simulations were performed to predict failure points under various loading conditions, followed by experimental validation using 3D-printed attachments with variations in slot depth and wall loops. To facilitate testing, a drop test rig was developed and validated. Our results demonstrated a consistent failure point at the slot of the attachment, with a slot depth of 1 mm and three wall loops achieving failure at the target force of 65 N. Additionally, the parameters can be tailored to customize the breakaway force based on user-specific factors, such as comfort and pain tolerance. CAD files and utensil assembly instructions can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/rfa-utensil-attachment
Simulating Time With Square-Root Space
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2025
Year: 2025

We show that for all functions $t(n) \geq n$, every multitape Turing machine running in time $t$ can be simulated in space only $O(\sqrt{t \log t})$. This is a substantial improvement over Hopcroft, Paul, and Valiant's simulation of time $t$ in $O(t/\log t)$ space from 50 years ago [FOCS 1975, JACM 1977]. Among other results, our simulation implies that bounded fan-in circuits of size $s$ can be evaluated on any input in only $\sqrt{s} \cdot poly(\log s)$ space, and that there are explicit problems solvable in $O(n)$ space which require $n^{2-\varepsilon}$ time on a multitape Turing machine for all $\varepsilon > 0$, thereby making a little progress on the $P$ versus $PSPACE$ problem. Our simulation reduces the problem of simulating time-bounded multitape Turing machines to a series of implicitly-defined Tree Evaluation instances with nice parameters, leveraging the remarkable space-efficient algorithm for Tree Evaluation recently found by Cook and Mertz [STOC 2024].
Exploring the Potential of Large Language Models for Estimating the Reading Comprehension Question Difficulty
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Reading comprehension is a key for individual success, yet the assessment of question difficulty remains challenging due to the extensive human annotation and large-scale testing required by traditional methods such as linguistic analysis and Item Response Theory (IRT). While these robust approaches provide valuable insights, their scalability is limited. There is potential for Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate question difficulty estimation; however, this area remains underexplored. Our study investigates the effectiveness of LLMs, specifically OpenAI's GPT-4o and o1, in estimating the difficulty of reading comprehension questions using the Study Aid and Reading Assessment (SARA) dataset. We evaluated both the accuracy of the models in answering comprehension questions and their ability to classify difficulty levels as defined by IRT. The results indicate that, while the models yield difficulty estimates that align meaningfully with derived IRT parameters, there are notable differences in their sensitivity to extreme item characteristics. These findings suggest that LLMs can serve as the scalable method for automated difficulty assessment, particularly in dynamic interactions between learners and Adaptive Instructional Systems (AIS), bridging the gap between traditional psychometric techniques and modern AIS for reading comprehension and paving the way for more adaptive and personalized educational assessments.
On-device edge learning for IoT data streams: a survey
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

This literature review explores continual learning methods for on-device training in the context of neural networks (NNs) and decision trees (DTs) for classification tasks on smart environments. We highlight key constraints, such as data architecture (batch vs. stream) and network capacity (cloud vs. edge), which impact TinyML algorithm design, due to the uncontrolled natural arrival of data streams. The survey details the challenges of deploying deep learners on resource-constrained edge devices, including catastrophic forgetting, data inefficiency, and the difficulty of handling IoT tabular data in open-world settings. While decision trees are more memory-efficient for on-device training, they are limited in expressiveness, requiring dynamic adaptations, like pruning and meta-learning, to handle complex patterns and concept drifts. We emphasize the importance of multi-criteria performance evaluation tailored to edge applications, which assess both output-based and internal representation metrics. The key challenge lies in integrating these building blocks into autonomous online systems, taking into account stability-plasticity trade-offs, forward-backward transfer, and model convergence.
PVBF: A Framework for Mitigating Parameter Variation Imbalance in Online Continual Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Online continual learning (OCL), which enables AI systems to adaptively learn from non-stationary data streams, is commonly achieved using experience replay (ER)-based methods that retain knowledge by replaying stored past during training. However, these methods face challenges of prediction bias, stemming from deviations in parameter update directions during task transitions. This paper identifies parameter variation imbalance as a critical factor contributing to prediction bias in ER-based OCL. Specifically, using the proposed parameter variation evaluation method, we highlight two types of imbalance: correlation-induced imbalance, where certain parameters are disproportionately updated across tasks, and layer-wise imbalance, where output layer parameters update faster than those in preceding layers. To mitigate the above imbalances, we propose the Parameter Variation Balancing Framework (PVBF), which incorporates: 1) a novel method to compute parameter correlations with previous tasks based on parameter variations, 2) an encourage-and-consolidate (E&C) method utilizing parameter correlations to perform gradient adjustments across all parameters during training, 3) a dual-layer copy weights with reinit (D-CWR) strategy to slowly update output layer parameters for frequently occuring sample categories. Experiments on short and long task sequences demonstrate that PVBF significantly reduces prediction bias and improves OCL performance, achieving up to 47\% higher accuracy compared to existing ER-based methods.
URO-Bench: Towards Comprehensive Evaluation for End-to-End Spoken Dialogue Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have driven significant progress in end-to-end spoken dialogue models (SDMs). In contrast to text-based LLMs, the evaluation framework for SDMs should encompass both cognitive dimensions (e.g., logical reasoning, knowledge) and speech-related aspects (e.g., paralinguistic cues, audio quality). However, there is still a lack of comprehensive evaluations for SDMs in speech-to-speech (S2S) scenarios. To address this gap, we propose URO-Bench, an extensive benchmark for SDMs. Notably, URO-Bench is the first S2S benchmark that covers evaluations about multilingualism, multi-round dialogues, and paralinguistics. Our benchmark is divided into two difficulty levels: basic track and pro track, each comprising 20 test sets, evaluating the spoken dialogue model's abilities in Understanding, Reasoning, and Oral conversation. Evaluations on our proposed benchmark reveal that current open-source SDMs perform rather well in daily QA tasks, but lag behind their backbone LLMs in terms of instruction-following ability and also suffer from catastrophic forgetting. Their performance in advanced evaluations of paralinguistic information and audio understanding remains subpar, highlighting the need for further research in this direction. We hope that URO-Bench can facilitate the development of spoken dialogue models by providing a multifaceted evaluation of existing models and helping to track progress in this area.
Weakly Supervised Pixel-Level Annotation with Visual Interpretability
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

Medical image annotation is essential for diagnosing diseases, yet manual annotation is time-consuming, costly, and prone to variability among experts. To address these challenges, we propose an automated explainable annotation system that integrates ensemble learning, visual explainability, and uncertainty quantification. Our approach combines three pre-trained deep learning models - ResNet50, EfficientNet, and DenseNet - enhanced with XGrad-CAM for visual explanations and Monte Carlo Dropout for uncertainty quantification. This ensemble mimics the consensus of multiple radiologists by intersecting saliency maps from models that agree on the diagnosis while uncertain predictions are flagged for human review. We evaluated our system using the TBX11K medical imaging dataset and a Fire segmentation dataset, demonstrating its robustness across different domains. Experimental results show that our method outperforms baseline models, achieving 93.04% accuracy on TBX11K and 96.4% accuracy on the Fire dataset. Moreover, our model produces precise pixel-level annotations despite being trained with only image-level labels, achieving Intersection over Union IoU scores of 36.07% and 64.7%, respectively. By enhancing the accuracy and interpretability of image annotations, our approach offers a reliable and transparent solution for medical diagnostics and other image analysis tasks.